Toast The End of Your Next Race With a Shandy Beer Pop

Welcome to Thirsty Thursday! Each week we toast the coming weekend with a new adult beverage for you to enjoy. Cheers!

Sticking to a race training schedule involves making sacrifices. Getting ready for a triathlon? Say goodbye to after work drinks on Friday night – you have to be up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to get in a “brick” (bike-run workout). But what if there was another option?

Enter the shandy, a blend of beer and another beverage (often citrus beer or citrus soda). It traces its roots to a tavern in Munich in 1922, where the barkeep cut his beer with lemonade, making the supply of booze go farther. It’s also lower in alcohol, which meant that the cyclists who rode through were less likely to wind up biking under the influence (in Germany the drink is called a radler).

The shandy has become huge in the US, where it’s typically a blend of beer and lemonade–we’re particularly fond of Wisconsin-based Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy and Samuel Adams Porch Rocker. New to the scene is Radeberger Schöfferhofer Grapefruit Hefeweisen (yes, that’s a mouthful). It’s a spin on the shandy: unfiltered wheat beer with grapefruit. Plus it’s super low in alcohol (2.5% ABV) and 136 calories a bottle, so you won’t be drinking back all that hard work you just did. Sip it post-run, or make it into pops: place roughly chopped pink grapefruit and torn mint into the bottoms of frozen pop molds, top with grapefruit hefeweisen, and freeze.